Kukla's Korner Hockey

Interim coach Ted Nolan has only been watching a week. Buffalo Sabres fans have been watching for 24 games. He gets it now.

Turnovers. Missed coverages. Dipsy-do passes. Bad penalties. This is not his kind of hockey. At all.

“By doing stupid things like we have been, it’s not going to work,” a steamed Nolan said after a 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday in Wells Fargo Center. “It’s going to be ugly games like this all night. So the gloves are officially off. You’ve got to do certain things to play. If you don’t, you’re not.”

Night after night, from sea to shining sea, the Sabres have made the same mistakes. What’s the old Einstein definition of insanity?

“When you constantly do the same thing over and over and over again and lose for the same reasons, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out,” Nolan said. “We have to do simple things. We have to play a grind-out kind of game. We can’t have turnovers. We can’t take the foolish penalties. We can’t get bounced off the puck and outmuscled in corners.”